


the model of efficiency, far as you can see

by firetan



Series: Cryptid M.I.A.H. vs. The World [1]
Category: Hatchetfield Universe - Team StarKid
Genre: (aka hints of AIAH if you squint), Alternate Universe, Black Friday, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Coffee, Friendship, Gen, Liberal use of headcanons, Non-Linear Narrative, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Pre-Relationship, Unhappy Ending, Urban Legends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29151903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firetan/pseuds/firetan
Summary: “I need to do things,” He’d told the man, who looked at him with steady eyes and a straight back, the model of a perfect soldier. “Everyone needs to do things, and nobody does them; they run out of time. If I take their time, and do their things, they’ll be able to move on with the rest.”AKA, the universe in which the Man In A Hurry is a bit more than a man, makes some friends, and is still quite certainly In A Hurry.
Relationships: Emma Perkins & Man in a Hurry, Gary Goldstein & Man in a Hurry, Hannah Foster & Man in a Hurry
Series: Cryptid M.I.A.H. vs. The World [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2171259
Comments: 17
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _"He's a company man, your right hand,  
>  thirteen years and counting.  
> No detectable ambition, **the model of efficiency,  
>  far as you can see.**"_  
> \- _Whatever You Want_ , Vienna Teng
> 
> Basically, I was chatting with the lovely lovely folks in the JEST discord, and came up with the fun and entertaining and absolutely nowhere near likely to be canon idea that MIAH is basically an entity that takes over peoples' bodies while they're asleep to do their unfinished tasks. It kind of snowballed from there, and now this is half AU, half wild headcanon bonanza, half character study... wait, that's too many halves.
> 
> Long story short, I'm a slut for friendships and found family and people being assholes but still caring about other people, yeet.
> 
> Anyways, enjoy!

Yawning, Emma took stock of the offerings spread across the floor of her meagre apartment, not quite daring to look at the clock. All she knew was that it was late, hours after she should have been done with her day, all because Nora decided they needed to keep Beanie’s open until midnight for some dumb event. Who the fuck wanted to keep a coffee shop open until midnight?

Okay, _usually_ , Emma wouldn’t say no to late-night coffee. However, with an essay due tomorrow morning for BS 231 and an 8:00 A.M. Biology lecture right before it, she knew she was all but royally fucked.

So there she stood, looking down at the round mirror propped up against a stack of unopened textbooks. That mirror had been with her a long time _—_ small enough to fit in a knapsack and take anywhere, up and down the trails and forests of Guatemala. She’d had to break out her old rock-and-bottlecap collection to make the pentagram that surrounded it _—_ since after all, as long as there was a pentagram, it didn’t really matter what it was made of. Sure, supposedly you should use salt or chalk or whatever, but Emma wasn’t one of those weird new-age witches or whatever, and she was pretty certain she’d lose her deposit if she started chalking up the floor. 

Carefully, Emma knelt and placed the mug of still-steaming coffee at the point of the pentagram facing her. Looking into the mirror, she winced at the visible bags beneath her eyes, before stifling another yawn and reciting the words that were starting to feel uncomfortably familiar.

“In a hurry, in a hurry, in a hurry…”

A chill breeze stirred through the apartment, rattling the frames of the closed windows and stirring the messy blankets on the bed. If she’d used candles, Emma knew for certain they’d have blown out. Suddenly, the hum of the fridge seemed to rise, warbling like a cacophony of incomprehensible voices. The sensation of ice trickled down Emma’s spine, and she forced down a shudder at the cold. After all, she wasn’t alone.

The mirror before her rippled, her reflection distorting and wavering. Had her hair always been that light? And curly? And sure, her face was tired, but there was no way that half-shadow of a beard was hers. Her eyes had always been brown, right?

No. No, the face looking back wasn’t hers, it was—

_“Oh, for— seriously? This is the third time this semester, get your shit together.”_

Emma sat back, rolling her eyes. “Sure, tell that to my boss.”

_“What’d she do now?”_

“Had us open till midnight for some dumb book release.” She scowled, watching the face in the mirror match the expression — though she knew he didn’t have to. “Yeah, I know, right? It’s just— dude, who the hell’s gonna be out at midnight for a book release in _Hatchetfield?_ I’m not even sure half of this town’s read a book this year.”

The man snorted, shifting as though crossing his arms. _“Fucking wish that were me.”_

“Lots of book reports?”

He groaned, slumping against the frame of the mirror and running a hand through his already messy mane of curls. The first time Emma had summoned him, she’d thought for a moment she was looking at a lion instead of a human — or at least, something in the form of one. _“You have no idea. This year’s been the worst in a while, I swear someone wrote my fucking name in a bathroom stall or some shit.”_

Well, Emma wouldn’t put that past them. Only in Hatchetfield would teenagers write up urban legends, instead of prank numbers or gossip. (Not to say there weren’t plenty of those, of course — Emma’s first weed hookup had been the date-and-time scrawled in the corner of the last stall in the basement-level girls’ bathrooms at Hatchetfield High. Which in hindsight had been pretty questionable, considering that the dealer was the older brother of one of the football guys, but hell if she’d cared.)

Yawning, she grabbed the sheath of papers from class and waved them in front of the mirror. “Well, at least it’s not a book report. I’ve got shit outlined and a few paragraphs started, but—” Another yawn. Fuck, her eyes were sore. “—got Bio at 8 tomorrow, and it’s— ugh, too late. I’ll give you a discount next time you hit Beanies, if it helps.”

 _“Urgh, only if I don’t have any other choices.”_ Despite the grumbling, he nodded readily enough, one brow quirked upwards in what Emma might even call amusement. _“Fine, sounds like a deal. Go lie down before you fall in my coffee, dumbass.”_

Emma laughed. “Sure, whatever, asshole.”

_“Asshole yourself! Get some fucking sleep!”_

Consciousness left almost the moment her head hit the pillow, a welcome absence of thought and energy ushered in by the grumbling from the mirror. 

When Emma woke up, right on the dot of her 7:00 alarm, the coffee mug was clean in the dish drain and a tidy stack of paper sat beside the laptop on her desk. She pulled herself out of bed, rubbing sleep out of her eyes and absently stepping over the rocks and bottlecaps still laid out across the floor as she made her way over to the brightly colored sticky note fluttering on top of the papers. It wasn’t one of hers — Emma owned a single pad of plain yellow notes that she’d been hoarding for the better part of a year, trying to make it last as long as humanly possible. Scratchy, slanted letters had been scrawled at an angle across the bright blue paper. 

_‘Next time, tell your shitty boss where she can stick it. Don’t you dare summon me again this semester, and get more fucking sleep.’_

An exaggerated frowny face accompanied the message, and Emma snorted as she pinned it up on her corkboard beside the others. At this rate, she might as well consider them a proper collection, right next to her rocks and bottlecaps and failed life goals. Maybe she should get a book to stick them in.

Emma hadn’t had many friends before leaving Hatchetfield, and never put much effort into making new ones when she returned. She was a loner by nature, antisocial in every circumstance barring parties, plays (well, once upon a time), and pot, and making friends — let alone maintaining friendships — never really came naturally to her. So that she knew someone well enough to bitch and banter with still shocked her, now and then. The only other people who might come close were Zoey’s friend Micah, and the awkward (in a cute way) guy who always ordered a black coffee and left good tips. In other words, a guy she worked with, and a guy whose name she didn’t know.

Hell, she barely even talked to her _brother-in-law and nephew_ , and they were the only living family she had left. 

Comparatively, the fact that the closest thing she had to a friend was one of Hatchetfield’s favorite urban legends, right up there with the Ape-Man and the Muck-Witch? Well, it seemed almost mundane.

* * *

Unlike most of Hatchetfield’s urban legends, which went through years shrouded in myth and grudging wonder, just about any resident of the town could tell you about the Man In A Hurry. 

Granted, they might not be able to tell you much, beyond that just about everyone in town had seen the guy around town and yet nobody seemed to know his name. Or where he lived, or what he did for a living. One day, he might greet you from behind the reception desk at Hatchetfield’s only hotel, and then the very next day you’d cross paths with him dropping off refills for the water cooler in the Hatchetfield High teachers’ lounge. He walked dogs, he served coffee, he delivered mail — or re-delivered mail, considering how often the post office managed to send packages just a few doors down from their intended destination — and tended to grumble and snap at just about every person, no matter their age or occupation or attitude. Everyone who met him described him a bit differently, but they could all agree on three things — that he had hair like a curly lion’s mane, that he always wore some sort of beige coat, and that he was most certainly In A Hurry.

Some residents of Hatchetfield could tell you more — Alexandra Foster would swear she’d dreamed about him more than she’d dreamed about herself, which might not sound strange until she told you that she’s only met the man once. The Homeless Man, nearly as ubiquitous a presence as the M.I.A.H. himself, had somehow never met him at all, but told anyone willing to listen that they were good, good friends — a claim the M.I.A.H. frequently refuted. Zoey Larson, who worked at Beanie’s, said he drank enough coffee to kill a horse.

Then again, she also claimed he’d gone on three dates with her, which the M.I.A.H. denied with a vengeance.

And of course, as with any small town, there were rumors. Some whispered that he really didn’t live anywhere, that he was homeless like the Homeless Man and they just called him the Man In A Hurry to avoid confusion. Others muttered about mirrors and offerings, favors asked and favors granted for the price of a night’s sleep and a freshly brewed coffee. One particularly eccentric professor articulated at length his precise theories on the M.I.A.H. as a being of extraplanar origin, slipping into the minds of humanity and infecting them with a united purpose, while his students yawned and calculated how much money they might have to spend on caffeine to get this so-called alien to finish their end-of-term write-ups.

However, amongst all the inhabitants of the strange, reclusive town, there were only a select few who could claim to really, properly know the entity so colloquially known as the Man In A Hurry.

Emma Perkins counted among them through sheer determination, or perhaps through sheer exhaustion. After the discovery that she could beg a strange being to take over her body and finish her homework when her job and classes stole every second of her spare time, had she flinched? Had she panicked? No— as a matter of fact, Emma Perkins had gone out to buy coffee beans, of markedly better quality than the stock at Beanie’s, and promptly began befriending the Man In A Hurry one caffeine bomb at a time.

Perhaps it was because Emma worked at a coffee shop and — quite frankly — couldn’t give two shits what people thought of her so long as she got her fair wages and turned in assignments on time. Or, perhaps, it was simply because people rarely summoned the M.I.A.H. more than once a decade, considering that even born-and-bred Hatchetfield residents tended to have mixed feelings about letting their sleeping bodies be possessed. Whatever the reason, Emma looked at the M.I.A.H. and saw, not a frightening monster, not a convenient resource to use, but a like-minded soul. Grouchy and antisocial, propelled by caffeine and willpower and a pinch of spite, and— well, the Emma who first summoned the M.I.A.H. had been sorely lacking in someone to bitch with, and the M.I.A.H. was never one to refuse a good bitching.

There were others, similarly-minded or similarly accepting. Those who didn’t really understand what was really at play, but who didn’t care — who were quite happy to just accept the state of the M.I.A.H.’s existence at face value. And then there were two very, very particular exceptions, neither of them individuals any outsider might expect.

The first was Hatchetfield’s most infamous attorney at law, Gary Goldstein — if Emma and the M.I.A.H. could be considered friends of a sort, then Gary would be the M.I.A.H.’s best friend. Closest, most trusted — but there will be a time for that.

And the other — a young girl, living in the trailer grounds at the edge of the Witchwood.

* * *

Hannah couldn’t articulate, really, when she first met MIAH.

It was after she first met Webby, of course — but then, she’d known Webby as long as she could remember, that soft voice in her head that put her in mind of the word _‘Mom’_ in a way Pamela Foster never quite lived up to. Webby was forever, so naturally nothing could have come before her — but MIAH hadn’t been very long behind.

She thinks it might have been the day he hopped into Pamela to take her to school, when Lexie had to leave early and all but begged their mother to actually watch Hannah for just a few hours. That had been back when Lexie still thought Pamela cared enough to care, which always made Hannah sad. Hannah could tell, after all. She could hear, and she could hear that Pamela didn’t, and wouldn’t ever. Lexie had left for school after making breakfast and packing Hannah’s backpack with all of her pretty markers and notebooks, and Pamela had passed out on the couch after watching the Morning Cup O’ News.

Even so, Hannah’s not actually sure that was the first time, because she hadn’t felt scared at all when between one second and the next, her mother was gone and there was a man in their trailer instead. And it wasn’t just Webby telling her not to be scared, either.

He’d been grouchy, that day, though Hannah soon learned that he was always grouchy and also never actually as grouchy as he sounded. Shorter than Pamela and taller than Lexie, with long hair that Hannah wanted to braid like hers but wasn’t quite sure if she dared ask. At first, she’d thought that maybe he didn’t like her, but he’d patted her head and fixed the tag on her overalls that Lexie couldn’t quite figure out, and he’d taken her to school just like Lexie did. And when Lexie came to pick her up, they’d gotten home and all the dishes were clean, and the laundry was hanging out to dry in the sun instead of moldering over the heater where it could catch fire. Pamela had been asleep on the couch the whole time, of course.

After that, Hannah saw MIAH a lot more.

Sometimes, he’d hop into Lexie to make Hannah dinner, because Mr. Pricely at Toy Zone made Lexie work too late at night and she got tired. Other times, he’d hop into Pamela to help clean up the trailer or get groceries while Lexie was out, and he always left a few extra bucks where Pamela wouldn’t find them so Lexie could put them in the California Jar. When Hannah asked how he knew about the California Jar, he’d explained that whatever Needs were in peoples heads, he could see. Lexie Needed money and some of that money she Needed to put in the California Jar, so he knew.

That made sense to Hannah. It was a little like how Webby told her things, except Webby told her things she needed to _know_ , and peoples’ minds told MIAH things they needed to _do_ . And then he did them, which Hannah thought was very nice of him, though he always disagreed when she said so.

MIAH did that a lot — well, not about the important things. Actually, he agreed with Hannah on the stuff no-one else did, like Webby being real and Lexie being a good sister, and the fact that Pamela genuinely didn’t care about either of her daughters. But other things, not so much — when Hannah told him he was nice, he scowled and told her he was an asshole, and then told her not to tell Lexie about that word. Or when Lexie told Hannah maybe she shouldn’t trust the random man who kept showing up to help them — MIAH agreed with that, even though Hannah knew he wasn’t going to hurt her.

Webby _said_.

As she got older, Lexie got busier and busier, even after she left school. Ethan was there too, after a point — but he was busy too, because his dad needed him and Lexie needed him. Hannah tried to tell Lexie she didn’t need to be watched all the time, but she was still too young for them to understand. And MIAH couldn’t be there all the time, even if Hannah had been able to make Lexie trust him. Other people Needed him too, just like other people needed Lexie and Ethan. He didn’t come as often, when Hannah got older. 

Still, sometimes she woke up and found little sticky notes around the trailer — next to a lunch in the fridge that Lexie hadn’t made, or a fresh load of laundry when they came home, or just next to her bed reminding her to sleep well. She stored them all away in an old cereal box hidden under her bed, with flowers that didn’t wither and rocks that Webby told her would protect her one day.

MIAH didn’t really understand Webby, but he believed in her. One day, when Hannah asked why, he made a frowny face and explained that Webby was why he couldn’t hop into Hannah. Not that he was mad about it, just that he could tell she was already being taken care of. She didn’t Need him quite the same way as everyone else.

That was the other thing they disagreed on. 

He said Hannah didn’t Need him, and she thought it was a bit of a shame that he only said that because she didn’t have things to do. If she could have made the words work, she would have told him she needed him plenty, just to _be_ instead of to _do_.

* * *

“Jeezus, are you going to stand there all day?”

Gary blinked, looking up from his phone to meet bright blue eyes glaring at him from beneath deep-set brows that furrowed into a scowl. The man — shorter than him, though that wasn’t necessarily unusual given Gary’s height — frowned deeper as Gary looked at him, one foot tapping in clear impatience.

“I’m sorry?”

The man gestured sharply past Gary. “The door, dumbass. You’re blocking the damn entrance.”

“Oh.” Glancing back over his shoulder, Gary took a moment to process that yes, he was still standing in front of the entrance to Beanie’s Coffee, and no, he had not actually gone inside and ordered the coffee he’d come for. It had been another email from Linda, distracting him, and then he got caught up checking the rest of the junk in his inbox, and listening to a few voicemails, and— “Sorry, I was just— um, let me get you coffee?”

Now those eyes — was it normal for them to be that blue? — narrowed in his direction, as though the man was calculating whether or not the offer was a prank. Which was quite rude! Gary would never stoop so low as to offer something he couldn’t follow through on — no contracts without proper fulfillment. He did, after all, have a reputation (and business) to uphold.

“I’m quite serious,” He assured, when the man didn’t seem interested in responding any time soon, “Just as a favor for getting distracted in an inconvenient place.”

The man glared for another moment, before shrugging and pushing past Gary to the door. “Sure, your loss.” 

Well, that left Gary little choice but to follow.

He didn’t learn the man’s name — not even from the barista, who just shouted _‘hey asshole’_ when the drink was ready with an expression that indicated more amusement than antagonism — but he did learn that he had the most ungodly sugar-caffeine bomb of a coffee order, and seemed to be in quite a rush to get somewhere. Took the drink, nodded to Gary, and left without another word — the absolute nerve! Not even a thank-you!

“What’s his deal?” He asked the barista, retrieving his drink with a bit more poise (or so he hoped).

She snorted, wiping a cloth across the counter and glancing at the door. “Dude, he’s _in a hurry_. You new here or something?”

“No.” Which didn’t seem particularly adequate now, as an explanation, so Gary hastened to add, “But I don’t really get out very much. Busy at the office and all that, audits out the wazoo, you understand. Gary Goldstein, Attorney at Law, by the way.”

The barista rolled her eyes, which — _oof_ , crushing blow to the ego. “Sure, I’ve seen the signs. Man, you really must be stuck in that office if you don’t know him.”

“Is he well-known?”

“Uh, is the Woolyfoot well-known?” Gary stared at her, and she groaned. “The _Hatchetfield Ape-Man_ , dude! Come on, do you not know any of this stuff? There’s the Ape-Man, the Muck-Witch of the Witchwood, Lumber-Axe the woodsman, and the Man In A Hurry. This is basic Hatchetfield culture.”

Taking a sip of his coffee, Gary processed that. “So— cryptids?”

“Urban legends,” She — Emma, according to her nametag — corrected, flipping the cloth back over her shoulder and returning to the register with a sigh. “Course, the Muck-Witch is from like a hundred years ago, and Lumber-Axe is more of a scary story for kids— but Man In A Hurry’s real enough.”

Gary frowned. “He seemed pretty normal to me. Not exactly _legendary_.”

For a moment, Emma blinked slowly at him, before a smile began to tug at her cheeks. It didn’t look like a friendly one. “Oh, you’ll see. Have fun figuring that out.”

Unsure of what he was meant to be ‘figuring out’, Gary fished out a dollar and change to drop in the tip jar — only fair, considering he’d taken up some extra time asking questions — and ducked out the doors before his coffee could start cooling. He did have work to get to, after all, and an appointment with Linda that afternoon. (Somehow, the anticipation wasn’t as appealing as it usually might have been).

It took about a month for Gary to cross paths with the man in a hurry once more, this time at the bus stop outside the courthouse. There was only the one bus line, of course, and Gary usually just drove — but his car was in the shop, after an incident with a pigeon he’d much rather forget, and his house just a bit too far to allow walking.

At first, he didn’t recognize the hunched figure seated by the bus sign, but a few steps closer and the messy curls started to look familiar enough.

“Oh, it’s you!”

Bright blue eyes glanced up at him, narrowed, and the man grunted in lieu of a greeting. Well, that wouldn’t do. Did he think he could just avoid a conversation that easily?

Sitting down on the other side of the bench, Gary took a moment to wipe the lenses of his glasses (always just a little too oily, damn it) before offering his friendliest and least-telemarketer-y smile to the man beside him. “Did you have business at the courthouse today?”

“Picked up forms for someone.”

Not much, but a start! “That’s nice of you. A friend, or family?”

“No.” Shoulders hunched, somewhere under the tawny hair and beige trenchcoat. “Some guy who lives across town. Broke his leg in an accident, couldn’t get to the courthouse on his own.”

Gary blinked, before smiling. “How generous! I’m sure he’ll be grateful.”

Those eyes flicked back up to meet his, and the man burrowed deeper into his coat with a huff. “Doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t. He needed the forms, is all.” He considered Gary for a moment of surprising scrutiny, and Gary wondered for a moment if he was trying to read his mind somehow. An odd thought to have. “You don’t usually take the bus. Car broken?”

“Ah, yes.” Grimacing, Gary tucked his scarf a little tighter around his neck, ruing the haircut he’d gotten a week before. “Pigeon stuck under the grill.”

That, at least, earned him a snort. “Oh, gross. Good luck with that.”

Gary shrugged. “Tony Green’s a good mechanic, I’m sure he’ll have it fixed up good as new. But— well, nothing to do until then but take the bus.” He glanced down at his phone, trying to count back down the minutes since he’d left work. “Is it late?”

“Only runs every half hour after six.”

“Oh.” Gary frowned. “Really?”

“Yup.”

The man didn’t seem inclined to go into any more detail, and Gary was beginning to run out of things to talk about. “So, uh— um, the barista at the coffee shop, she said you’re like— an urban legend?”

“She did, did she.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah, something about— uh, being in a hurry?” Pursing his lips, Gary studied the man beside him. “I’ll be honest, I don’t really know what this urban legend stuff is about, but I guess that means you’re well-known around here? You got a name?”

A flicker of amusement crossed his expression. “Wow, Goldstein. You really don’t get out, do you?”

“Nope. Lawsuits wait for no man, and all.”

“I guess not.”

Frowning, Gary checked his phone again. “You still didn’t tell me your name.”

One brow quirked up at him as the man sat up, considering. “You make a habit of demanding the names of everyone you meet?”

“No,” Gary responded, “But since you already know mine, it’s only polite.”

The man looked at him for a long moment before shrugging. “Well, you could call me Bogh, but I’m not much of a fan of it.”

“Well, what name are you a fan of?” Stretching, Gary twisted his neck one way and the other to ease out the kinks before looking back at his companion. “I can’t just call you _mister hurrying man_ or whatever it was.”

“... Miah.” A dusting of pink stained the tip of his nose, though it wasn’t very cold out. Gary wondered if perhaps his coat was too thin. “You can call me Miah, if you need something.”

Success! Gary beamed. “Alright then, Miah. So, what do you—”

A shrill ringing cut him off, and he grimaced in apology as he answered Linda’s call, nodding and ‘yes’-ing along to her rattled-off demands before sighing and running back inside to add the new forms to her file before the building closed properly. By the time he managed to make his way back to the bus stop, there was no sign of Miah — or the bus, which meant he had another half-hour of waiting ahead of him. 

Absently, Gary wondered if he should have asked for the other man’s phone number.

Well, there was always next time, and he was quite sure of that.

* * *

The first name they gave him wasn’t a name, it was a number.

 _Case Study 512_ , he’d been labeled. An anomalous entity, discovered on a small island in the Great Lakes region. Not eldritch, in the ways of the much more powerful beings that existed just across the veil where he couldn’t quite see. Not human either, which ruled out ghosts and ghasts and astral projections and all that nonsense. Ruling out those two hadn’t left the scientists and theoretical scientists and spiritual scientists with very much to go on, at the time, until the young Captain had come by the facility for a check-in and became the first person who actually bothered talking to him.

 _“I need to do things,”_ He’d told the man, who looked at him with steady eyes and a straight back, the model of a perfect soldier. _“Everyone needs to do things, and nobody does them; they run out of time. If I take their time, and do their things, they’ll be able to move on with the rest.”_

“Move on to where?”

 _“To nowhere?”_ Clearly, the man had thought he meant death or some afterlife, and that wasn’t it. _“Just to the next thing they need to do. You humans are so full of Tasks and Needs, it’s fucking annoying. They pile up and pile up, and none of you ever finish them.”_ If he just listened, just watched, he could _hearseefeel_ the tracings of Need through the Captain’s veins. _“You have paperwork you forgot to do last night, and three dirty spoons and a broken coffee mug in your sink. There’s also a love letter you’ve been pretending you forgot to send for weeks, but you’re lying and it’s ridiculous, all those hang-ups and messy bits. Just hurry up and get the shit done, for crying out loud!”_

He’d thought perhaps that might make the man angry, but the Captain had laughed instead. “You’re a curious one. What would you have us do, then?”

If he’d had any eyes, he would have rolled them. _“Either do your Tasks, or let me do them. It’s not that hard.”_

“Let you do them?”

 _“You all sleep, don’t you?”_ The Captain had nodded, slow, thoughtful. Ugh, thoughtful and slow were the worst things in the world. _“I don’t. Long as I have energy. I can see the Needs, the Tasks — hop in and complete them, hop out before you go back to waking.”_

That had earned a frown. “You’re talking about possession people in their sleep.”

 _“Only to get shit done.”_ A brow had quirked up, in time with a thin plume of cigarette smoke, and he’d growled. _“Please, you think I’d want to be stuck in one of your ridiculous bodies? With all your Needs and Tasks and messy bits? No thank you. In and out, on to the next, I’m quite happy with that. Makes everything nice and smooth and fast.”_

After the meeting dragged on for a painfully long while, the Captain had laughed again and told the scientists and theoretical scientists and spiritual scientists to let him go. He’d been released back to his home with the assurance that he could contact their agency if he ever desired (as if — all he desired was to Get Tasks Done), and with a new name that grated on his tongue every time he hopped into a human form.

 _Being Of Great Haste_ , ugh. Too fancy and too droll at the same time, could they have come up with anything worse?

Still, the little town on his island was full of people who Needed things and had Tasks to complete, so the Being Of Great Haste got right to work. Slip in, run a forgotten errand, finish a task at the office or drop off a lunch for a kid. He made sure to be careful at first, keeping the humans’ forms to avoid unnecessary panicking (humans did a lot of things unnecessarily, it seemed), but after a time he realized that for whatever reason, none of the humans thought of his presence as strange. People appearing at odd hours never aroused the questions they should have, so the Being Of Great Haste came to the conclusion that whatever he was, he didn’t need to think about causing concern. Which certainly made things easier.

As more time passed, he began adopting a human guise of his own, one that the other humans could look at as its own entity in case they ever desired to communicate with him. He modeled it after the Captain, who had returned to the scientists now and again and seemed to be called Colonel now — long curls the color of honey, or honeycomb, strong bones and eyes rather like the lake beneath a half-clouded sky. Sturdy build, though the Being Of Great Haste preferred to cover it with the nice sand-colored coat the man had worn to their first meeting.

He never could quite remember what the exact coat looked like, but close enough was close enough, and humans were foolish — tell them there was no difference, and they’d soon forget they’d ever thought otherwise.

Once he started appearing in his new shape, the humans seemed to begin identifying him, and even gave him a new name — _the Man In A Hurry_. He rather liked that one — no fancy words or strange, nonspecific terms. A man, in a hurry. It described him well and to-the-point, and he found himself beginning to use it even in his own thoughts.

(Well, set aside that he wasn’t a man, per se, but that certainly hadn’t bothered him before and would continue not to going forward. The Man In A Hurry was bothered enough by regular human conundrums without fussing over the semantics of identity.)

After some years, the Man In A Hurry met a little girl, living out by the forest that even he dared not enter. She was the first human whose Needs he’d been unable to sense, but the woman living with her had been a massive tangle of them. Neglected Tasks, neglected children, ugh — if the Man In A Hurry had a natural stomach, he might have been nauseated. As it was, he hopped into the woman while she slept and crept around the cramped, ratty vehicle they lived in, cataloguing the collective State of things before returning to the primary Task and taking the little girl, with her backpack of worn care and strange, silk-wrapped mind, to school.

For many years, the Man In A Hurry had never found any particular attachment to individual humans, beyond some few cases of grudging exasperation. Yet, something about the little girl seemed to thrall him, and he found himself returning more frequently than to any human before. Hopping into her sister or mother — never her, as he found himself properly rebuffed upon a first attempt and never bothered trying after — he checked that the dingy abode had food, clean clothing-things, that Hannah Foster ate well and slept well and listened well to the Eldritch entity protecting her mind.

One day, sitting on the rickety steps of the trailer, she asked his name.

The Man In A Hurry had frowned, borrowing the muscles of her mother’s body and the face of a man who was called Major General now, and rarely came to visit. “I don’t have one.”

“Don’t?”

Hannah had frowned too, and the Man In A Hurry found — to his own surprise — that he didn’t much like that. “I have been called things. Case Study 5-1-2, a Being Of Great Haste, a Man In A Hurry. Wouldn’t call those names, though.”

Her eyes had gone thoughtful and distant, the way they always did when she listened to the creature she called Webby. Once, the Man In A Hurry would have found such moments annoying, and it had been another surprise when he first realized that he no longer felt that way. Perhaps, spending so much time in and amongst humans, he was becoming more like them. The thought chilled him.

After a minute, Hannah had breathed out low and even, and patted his hand.

“Miah.”

“What?”

She patted his hand again, nodding. “Man-In-A-Hurry — Em Ai Aye Aych. _Miah_.” She’d looked up to meet his eyes, and not for the first time, he’d wondered just what else was staring back at him through that gaze. Surely, a human child of her age shouldn’t have such depth. “Webby says everyone deserves a name. Precious.”

The Man In A Hurry had mulled over that statement, turning it from side to side in his mind like a smooth river-stone, and smiled. He didn’t often smile — too many muscles, too much effort. But for Hannah, he could offer a smile.

“Miah, then.”

Time passed. Hannah grew up — not just in age, but height as well, sprouting up quite suddenly around the same time that her sister dropped out of school. A woman died in a car crash in winter, leaving a husband and son in mourning with quite a lot of Tasks and Needs to manage, and the Man In A Hurry — Miah, the first real name he’d been given — wasn’t about to leave them unfinished.

More and more, people recognized him in the street, waving or smiling in their strange ways. A barista somehow found the instructions for calling him directly — Miah still couldn’t decide whether he wanted to strangle or thank whoever came up with them — and began bullheadedly dragging him into her Tasks and Needs and, more surprisingly, her life.

Hannah Foster was Miah’s first real friend, and Emma Perkins became the second.

For a human, she understood his frustration with her kind better than almost any other he’d met, and Miah found himself almost enjoying their conversations, whether during a summoning or when he passed by her place of occupation for an energy boost (because funny enough, piloting around a sleeping human required quite a lot of excess energy, and humanity’s processed caffeine may just have been invented by divine will). She laughed when he stalked past the counter, and returned each irritated insult with as good as she got, like all she needed to get through her Tasks for the day was a chance to call someone an asshole.

It was funny, how he could complete Tasks and Needs without even hopping into a person. Sometimes, just by being nearby and saying one thing or performing a small action, he could make little changes. Little changes became big changes, big enough to complete a Task or fill a Need that otherwise might have been impossible. Miah tried not to wonder about that.

And then he met Gary. 

Or, rather, was somewhat forcefully befriended by Gary, who seemed to take Miah’s half-answers and untied attachments as a personal challenge. Gary Goldstein was obnoxious and nosy, always chattering about nonsense and running this way and that like some headless chicken. He had Tasks and Needs, but so many were just— so irritatingly pointless, or unnecessary, or downright _opposed_ to each other. A Task to respond to calls and emails from a woman named Linda, at odds with the Need to get a damn night’s sleep without being at some other human’s beck-and-call. A Task to take care of a parking ticket filed against Tom Houston, despite the Need to support Tom Houston as a friend-of-sorts (the definition was unclear, which meant Gary wasn’t sure how to define it to himself).

And yet, like Emma Perkins, like Hannah Foster, Gary seemed to look at Miah and see more — or perhaps less — than an entity, than Cast Study 5-1-2, than the Being Of Great Haste who later became the Man In A Hurry. He saw _Just Miah_ , interpreted as someone grouchy and irritable and with a wicked sense of humor, offered to repay mistakes in coffee and car rides to even the most unexpected of Miah’s destinations.

For the first time, as the months went by and Gary went from a thorn in his side to a permanent fixture in his existence, Miah wished he had a form and life of his own.

Wished that perhaps, for once, he could be human and allow himself his own Tasks and Needs rather than attending to others. _Tasks_ — check on Hannah and Alexandra Foster, make sure their laundry is clean and their fridge stocked, let Emma bitch at him from behind the counter and slip her a real tip later when she wouldn’t have to worry about sharing it. _Needs_ — call the General (just General, now) and thank him after so many years for letting Miah exist as himself, thank Hannah and Webby for giving him his first real name, find Gary and—

Well.

No use dwelling on impossibilities. After all, he was the Man In A Hurry, and he had Tasks to complete. If he wanted just a moment to stop and linger in someone’s company, feel the solid touch of a human hand without moving from one call to the next— well, at least no-one would ever have to know.

The next time Gary asked if he wanted to get coffee together, Miah probed his current host’s mind, checking that they would still be asleep for a good while longer, and said yes.


	2. lake michigan, stay endless and painted in sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He didn’t understand why Lex couldn’t just see that this was all for the better._
> 
> _After all, it wasn’t like she didn’t Need a Wiggly too. It was just that she already had one — or at least, Hannah did — and all these other Needs, these other people, didn’t. Surely, it wasn’t such a bad thing to fulfill them?_
> 
> AKA, the part where Black Friday happens, and nobody wins in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _"Oh Chicago don't forget me  
>  As the miles between us grow.  
> Keep the maple tree carved with the name of my love,  
> the hills we would sled race down;  
>  **Lake Michigan, stay endless and painted in sky,**  
>  goodbye."  
> \- No Gringo,_, Vienna Teng
> 
> So, I had initially come up with this AU with the thought of it being able to be canon-compliant with Black Friday. Add in some lovely suggestions for pain, some additional headcanon and a bit of character divergence, and... well. You'll see.
> 
>  **Content warnings:**  
>  \- Black Friday-typical violence & death  
> \- POV from a Wigglified character  
> \- Uh... threat of nuclear war?

Really, he was only there because some dad had a late shift at work, and wouldn’t have been up early enough to get in line on time. The guy took overtime like most people take drinks of water, and hadn’t really planned what he was going to get his 5-year-old daughter for Christmas until it was edging on December.

So there Miah was, huddled up near the front of the line stretching away from the Lakeside Mall Toy Zone, waiting to buy a Wiggly.

Ugh, lines were the fucking worst. Hell, in the time he’d had to stand there doing nothing, he could’ve gotten at _least_ five other Tasks done. But _no_ , humans cared about shit like this, so there was no choice but to stick it out and follow what the rest did. And why did this damn shopping holiday have to be in winter, anyways? Human bodies always felt too much temperature for Miah’s taste.

Shivering, he burrowed a little further into his coat, tugging at the scarf Gary had oh-so-graciously slung around his neck an hour or two ago. Why Gary had two scarves, Miah wasn’t about to ask. He clearly didn’t Need them both, considering he’d given one away. Mystery for the ages.

Usually, Gary tended towards talkative, but today he remained mostly silent, going through emails and messages on his phone. Miah watched the Needs and Tasks cycle around him, through him, in and out _—_ he never could quite find the right human words for what Needs and Tasks _looked-felt-sounded_ like. Call Linda, call Gerald, respond to three invoices, schedule two court dates, another email just came in with forms that needed filing, already there were lawsuits popping up around shopper mania even though half the stores hadn’t opened yet. And Gary Needed sleep _—_ nine hours over the past two days was not cutting it.

But it wasn’t like Miah could help him with any of that, not while he was working on a Task already, so he left Gary to his device and his devices and stared moodily at the line ahead of him. There weren’t many people in front of him, since he’d been able to head for the mall as soon as his host hit the hay. A few of them he recognized _—_ Becky, with many fewer Needs now that her husband was gone; the Homeless Man who was also the man that kept flirting with Zoey at Beanie’s (look, temporal inconsistencies were _not_ Miah’s business); Micah, Emma’s co-worker.

A part of him wished he could ask Emma to come save him from boredom, maybe bring a coffee with her _—_ but no, she Needed to be watching her nephew with her boyfriend. Not that she called him her boyfriend, but Miah could tell. She Needed to downplay any commitment she made.

As it was, he settled for texting her _—_ figuring out how to manifest a cell phone of his own had taken a hot month or so, but it was worth it to have a way to bother her without being summoned. He griped at her about the cold, the line, the insufferable waiting; she responded with bitter comments over how she’d thought they were having a family gathering and instead her brother-in-law saddled her with babysitting while he went to the mall. It wasn’t the babysitting she was angry about, she ranted at him in pixelated letters, but the fact that Tom hadn’t just been upfront with her about it.

Beneath the words, Miah could tell it hurt her. For someone who Needed to be distant and yet Needed people so powerfully, the vulnerability in reaching out had to have taken a lot of strength, and then letting it be immediately undermined would have stung.

So Miah let himself get swept up in gossiping when Tom came down the line, narrowing his borrowed eyes at the man’s back and surreptitiously holding his phone up to capture the moment Tom came face-to-face with Becky. Added a witty caption, sent it to Emma, immediately started catching more as the rest of the line caught onto the scent of drama like a pack of bloodhounds. Linda Monroe pointed out Tom’s weight gain (Miah never really understood why humans cared so much about such things, but sent it to Emma anyways), Gary commented on his old classmate’s PTSD (that part, Miah didn’t send, because even though trauma made no sense to him, it usually came with a lot of severe-enough Needs that he knew to take it seriously), and a video of the entire line suppressing groans and cries as the two ex-sweethearts stumbled through a basic fucking conversation even earned a cry-laughing emoji in response. Emma, coming in clutch, as the young humans were saying.

In response to that, Miah shot another shaky video zooming in on the pair, muttering _“Just skip to the fucking”_ under his breath and sending it just a moment before Homeless Ted dragged him back with a righteously offended scowl. (As though his temporally consistent counterpart wouldn’t have done the same. Again, Miah was not going to touch that issue with a ten-foot-pole, _thank you very much)._

A deluge of emojis and garbled letters lit up his screen, and he smothered a laugh.

_ ‘dude, i’m watching his kid! knock it off!’ _

_ ‘Oopsie-daisy, did someone leave their volume on?’ _

_ ‘ugh i know you’re laughing, you jerk’ _

_ ‘What does mister ‘we’re-intimate’ say?’ _

_ ‘he’s laughing too, what an ass’ _

_ ‘Says the woman dating him.’ _

_ ‘you dont get to judge my taste, your best friends are me and gary fucking goldstein’ _

Miah snorted at that, half-turning to show Gary the (not unwarranted) slander before he realized that his friend had vanished. Or, rather, moved _—_ the familiar, somewhat nasally sound of Gary’s voice was quite audible from closer to the front of the line, something about audits and Linda. Damn, were the doors open? He must have lost track of time…

With a twinge of what he’d begun to recognize as regret, Miah sent a last parting text and shoved his phone into a pocket, stretching a foot out to hold Gary’s place and craning his neck around Homeless Ted’s shoulder to get a look at whatever was happening. From what he could see, Linda Monroe and Sherman Young were engaging in a heated argument with Mr. Pricely, while Lex looked _—_ well, dead on her feet, which wasn’t unusual for her being on the job. Maybe once Miah was done getting the doll for this Task, he could catch her on her next break and offer to take over for a bit. The sooner the better.

That said, he felt rather justified in waving a hand and offering to pay a higher price in order to just get the fucking doll and be done with it. Sure, the humans around him all sounded pretty irritated, but it wasn’t like they were making any progress with things either, and he had Tasks to do. Humans, always so _—_ _impractical_ might be the word.

Hung up on inane things.

Then the man who’d been in line in front of Homeless Ted made a mad dash for the counter, wrestling the Wiggly doll out of Lex’s hands, and something in Miah’s mind clicked into place. After all, wouldn’t it be better for his current host if the man acquired a Wiggly without wasting any of his currency? And if other people were going to take them… 

Well, this would be so much _faster_ than waiting in line.

* * *

He didn’t understand why Lex couldn’t just see that this was all for the better.

After all, it wasn’t like she didn’t Need a Wiggly too. It was just that she already had one _—_ or at least, Hannah did _—_ and all these other Needs, these other people, didn’t. Surely, it wasn’t such a bad thing to fulfill them?

Miah kept his mouth shut, smiling as Linda went through her plans for acquiring the last doll remaining in the complex, half his attention focused on suppressing his host back into sleep. He couldn’t exactly just let go without finishing this one, simple Task, now could he? No, surely not. The man would understand once he woke up back home with a Wiggly, safe and sound and not even a penny out of pocket.

And besides, once Linda got a doll and opened the portal, Wiggly would make sure everyone had a doll. All the Needs, all the Tasks, they would be fulfilled just like that, and then Miah would have his job done. He’d be able to focus on all of the things he _wanted_ to do, rather than the Needs and Tasks that humanity left so horrifically neglected.

He didn’t understand why Lex couldn’t just _see_.

Nor could he understand the horror on her face when Linda slashed her boxcutter through Frank Pricely’s throat, the man writhing on the floor as his lifeblood seeped out between his fingers. He’d treated Lex horribly for as long as she’d been employed, taking advantage of her situation to work her to the bone for scraps, never stepping in when customers harassed her or she had to come into work sick because her family needed the money for groceries that week. Why wasn’t she glad, relieved by his death? Perhaps the problem wasn’t Frank Pricely, but something else… the mall? The town? Pamela Foster?

Well, that was alright. Miah could take care of those too, one at a time. But first, Linda Needed a Wiggly _—_ a Need that felt strange against his senses, rippling as though underwater.

Miah dismissed the foreign feeling as a result of his divided focus, still pushing down on the man whose body he was borrowing. Really, the man always worked such long shifts and got so little rest, this was for his own good too. A nice long sleep, after which all his problems would be solved. Wouldn’t that make him happy?

He stood back, watching as Linda held her bloodied weapon against Lex’s throat. Silly woman, didn’t she see that it was pointless? Lex wasn’t omniscient, it wasn’t as though she could magically find another doll _—_

“I’ve seen it, on the security camera footage!” The mall guard crowed _—_ what was his name? Oh, it wasn’t as though Miah cared _—_ from his perch atop one of the checkout counters, waving a tape in the air. “This witch stole a doll and put it into the backpack of a little girl with pigtails and a hat.”

Miah could almost feel the blood turning to ice inside Lex’s veins, the sharp crackle of emotions like lightning as her Need snapped in an instant from _‘get a doll’_ to _‘protect Hannah’_. Hannah?

Oh, right, Lex’s doll was with Hannah. A little girl… with pigtails.

But Hannah didn’t wear hats, so surely it had to be some other unattended child. After all, Miah wouldn’t let anything happen to those two _—_ they just had to wait and be patient. And even if the child was Hannah, surely she wouldn’t mind letting him have the doll, just for a little while? Once Wiggly came, they could have as many dolls as they Needed. All they needed to do now was wait _—_ and humans were so hideously good at waiting. Sometimes they waited all their miserable lives for things to change or improve or move forth, without ever making a single thing happen on their own.

So Miah stood back, keeping an eye on things in the Toy Zone base as Linda sent the others out to search for the child with the doll. He’d make sure Lex didn’t get hurt unnecessarily, and Hannah _—_ Hannah was probably fine, she probably wasn’t even in the mall. After all, why would Lex have brought her there on Black Friday?

She and Ethan were probably out in one of the parks, playing on a playground or climbing trees. They’d be fine.

And meanwhile, Linda Needed the doll, and Needed his help. Since he was already working on the doll Task, there was no reason why the Needs couldn’t just… line up. Get Linda the doll, she’d get him the doll, everything would work out.

Except _—_ except while Miah was distracted, paying attention to Linda’s Needs and Tasks through that distracting water-veil, Sherman Young took Lex into the backroom and neither of them came back out. That was fine, it was fine, he probably just had her tied up where she wouldn’t hurt herself, and he was keeping guard. Lex was fine, Linda wouldn’t hurt her now that she wasn’t getting in the way, and everyone here was focused on Linda’s Needs. They wouldn’t do anything she didn’t Need them to do, right?

The security guard and Gary came back, and Miah almost wanted to laugh at the expression on Gary’s face _—_ he’d always known his friend was really passionate about Linda’s Needs (even the ones Miah found _—_ well, rather unsightly or irrational), but this was taking it to the next level. Between them, they carried an unconscious Becky Barnes, and Hannah Foster.

Why wasn’t she out in the park? Ethan must have let her out of his sight, irresponsible boy. Clearly, it was his fault that the guard and Gary dragged her back to Toy Zone, struggling and fighting. Had they not explained to her that this was for her own good?

It was for _everyone’s_ good, really.

So why was she looking at him like that, with that solemn expression, as Linda rifled through her bag? Why wasn’t she looking at Linda, or at the bag that no longer contained the doll even though they all Needed it _—_ why was she looking at Miah? Wide eyes, chin tilted up just like it had when she gave him his name, like she was making a declaration? Why was she looking at him like that, instead of at her mother, instead of at Linda as the woman threatened her with a knife (like that would be of any use), instead of _—_ instead of at anyone else?

He was doing this for her, for all of them. Once Wiggly came, she and Lex could have many dolls, they could have whatever they needed to get away from Pamela Foster and find a safer life.

Why did she look at him like a challenge?

And why was Lex _—_ why was Lex holding a flame to the Wiggly she Needed? While Tom Houston held a gun to Linda’s head? Didn’t either of them see that this was bigger than whatever their puny little feelings were leading them to believe? Didn’t either of them understand the grander purpose behind all this, the great freedom that everything Miah did today was leading to?”

Lex Needed to sell that Wiggly, not to burn it. Tom Needed to not be holding that gun, and Needed to be laying down before his stitches popped. Becky Barnes Needed _—_

Bang!

Confusion, static, shock.

Betrayal?

Fire.

_ Fire. _

_ Burning. _

_ Darkness. _

  
  


The Man In A Hurry woke up, somewhere at the edge of the Lakeside Mall, unable to feel the flames licking up the side of the building.

He… 

_ What had he done? _

* * *

Even with the lowest of low expectations, this had to have been just about the worst day of Gary Goldstein’s life.

First, the awful waiting in line for hours and hours, out in the cold and dark as they waited for the near-winter sun to rise and the doors to open. Then, the incessant emails and alerts popping up without a moment’s rest, always another thing to do before he’d even finished assuring someone that he’d get to the first as soon as he had a little time. And that was without Linda waiting further along in line, the sound of her voice always catching his ear even when he tried to tune it out. Which wasn’t his fault, he just… always noticed her.

If he could have looked back on it all, he might have realized that he noticed her too much. That she was the reason he was even standing in this line, waiting to buy a doll he had no use for _—_ Linda would always need more than she had at a moment, and Gary aimed to please. When one of her sons inevitably lost a doll, Gary would be there with a replacement before she even had to ask.

Maybe, if he pleased her enough, she might actually consider promoting their relationship up from ‘beck-and-call attorney-and-client’ and ‘frequent demands for a quick office shag’ to… something better, something with meaning.

After all, it wasn’t like Gary  _ enjoyed  _ being the mistress, the ‘other man’. He just… liked Linda, that was all. She made him feel useful, _needed_.

Highlight of the day, at least, was that Miah was there in line with him. Gary hadn’t the foggiest clue why Miah, of all people, wanted a Wiggly doll -- would’ve thought his friend was too practical (and too cynical) for the toy _—_ but the company was nice, even if Gary found himself so beset by notifications and emails that he couldn’t quite strike up a conversation. He figured Miah wouldn’t mind, considering that he could see the other man texting someone while they waited. Every time he looked up from his own phone, the sky was a little lighter and Miah’s fingers continued flying across his phone screen without ceasing.

At one point Miah even laughed, and Gary felt an odd prickle of discontent. Maybe it was just because Miah didn’t laugh much, so it seemed strange?

Surely _—_ surely Gary wasn’t  _ jealous  _ of whoever was on the other end of that conversation. Preposterous, absolutely preposterous. Miah had to have other friends besides Gary, so why wouldn’t he talk to them, and laugh at their texts, smothering a smile behind one hand. The pink of his cheeks and nose were _—_ they were just from the cold! Not a blush, not _—_ _ come on, get it together, Gary. _

Frankly, standing in that line had turned out to be the best part of the day. Now, Gary wouldn’t point any fingers or assign any blame, because there could be many legal implications to just about any of that _—_ but, well, one thing lead to another and another, and next thing he knew he was fleeing the mall with Linda’s very distinctly dead body in his arms, Gerald’s panicked voice crackling over his bluetooth, and the smell of fire carried on the smoke beginning to billow at his heels. Absolutely none of which Gary had wanted! He just wanted to get a doll for Linda’s sake, to help her just like he always did _—_ and now, now he’d never help her again, and he couldn’t even say it was anything but her own fault.

He felt a sob catch in his chest, unable to tell whether it was born of just the stress of the entire day crashing down, or else out of some twisted form of grief. Gary had _—_ at least, he _thought_ he loved Linda, in a way, and yet so many parts of him felt…

Relieved.

There was something fucking messed up about that, he mused absently, as he reached the exit and made his way to where he knew Gerald had kept the car waiting all day, patient and placid. Just like Gary, in a way _—_ so eager to please just one woman. 

From the outside, people might expect that Gary and Gerald wouldn’t get along. Sure, Gerald’s memory tended to fail him when it came to Gary’s name, and Gary didn’t always have the patience for Gerald’s fretting, but they’d never been on bad terms. They both understood what it was like to love a woman like Linda Monroe, after all. 

And now, he supposed bitterly as he handed Linda’s body to her confused and bereaved husband, now they had one more thing in common. The Monroe children were asleep in the back seat of the car _—_ tuckered out by the long wait of the day. Gary could see burger wrappers and a few soda cups on the floor, waiting to be cleaned, and he smothered an odd burse of gratitude. Maybe it was a bit petty, but knowing that Gerald cared enough to sneak around Linda’s orders in order to take care of their kids _—_ at least one of which was more than likely Gary’s kid, speaking on a purely biological level _—_ felt like a single point of goodness in a murky sea of absolute horrors.

Gerald drove away, back to a house now one person emptier, and Gary watched the car’s tail lights disappear into the dark. He wasn’t sure what else to do now _—_ his car had been in the mall’s lot, and getting anywhere near those flames seemed like a pretty awful idea at the moment. Some other survivors appeared to be milling around the area, and _—_ so sue him (hah), but he didn’t quite want to risk presenting himself to anyone he might have _—_

_ “Gary! Shit, Gary, can you hear me?” _

His bluetooth crackled with static, and Gary jumped about a half foot in the air at the voice that came over the line. He scrambled to hold it in as it nearly fell out with the motion, pressing the little piece of technology to his ear and ignoring how his glasses slid askew.

“Miah?!”

_ “Who the fuck else? Shit, Gary, I know this is weird, but—” _

“But you _—_ you _—_ ” Miah had been right there with him, following Linda’s orders, worshipping _—_ god, worshipping her, worshipping that thing. And only now did Gary realize that hey, that seemed off, because Miah had never been even the slightest bit interested in either Linda _or_ religion. And that was without mentioning that _—_ “Did you escape the _—_ the fire? The _—_ you _—_ ”

_ “No, you idiot!” _ Miah’s voice popped and snarled, almost the way Gary thought electricity might sound.  _ “That’s why I need your fucking help! Shit, I need to— Gary, okay, I know this is going to sound fucking—” _

“‘No’, what do you mean ‘no’?” That couldn’t be right, Miah had to have made it out, Gary couldn’t have lost another person today _—_ “Miah, please tell me you’re alright.”

There was a brief pause, static humming in his ear, before Miah responded in a subdued tone.  _ “Look, Gary, there’s— there’s shit I haven’t told you about myself, okay? I’m not— I’m fine. I didn’t make it out of the fire, but it— it could kill me, but it couldn’t kill **me** , okay? Look, that’s the thing, I need— there’s people I have to go talk to, to— shit, apologize or something, but I can’t do it on my own—” _

“Miah, I’d love to help, but I’ve had a real fucking day and I don’t have the time to _—_ ”

_ “Gary,  _ **_please_ ** _.” _

The desperation in his friend’s voice struck something in Gary and he hesitated, so starkly aware of the cold wind on his forehead and the ache of loss deep in his chest. He wanted to be able to do something, but after _—_ after everything _—_ “Miah, I can’t right now. I just can’t.”

Silence lingered, stretching through long moments that dilated just like hours spent in the office. When Miah spoke again, he sounded… tired. Sounded like how Gary felt.

_ “That’s… fair. Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked you, I just—” _ His voice hitched, sharp and rough, and he broke off as though surprised by his own emotion. (Come to think of it, Gary had never actually seen Miah cry before. Though perhaps they just hadn’t been good enough friends for that. Which shouldn’t have hurt to think, and yet...).  _ “—fuck, the— the girls in there, I know them. I don’t know why I— I just have to make sure they’re okay. And I can’t— I don’t know if Hannah can hear me like this, and Lex definitely can’t.” _

Gary frowned. “Can’t hear you? Miah, what’s going on?”

_ “I’m—” _ Another pause,  _ “—listen, Gary, before I tell you this, I promise I’m still your friend. All that shit, the— that’s all real, that’s genuine. None of— none of this changes that.” _

“Miah, you’re scaring me.”

_ “I know.” _ Miah laughed, and it sounded raw. Painful.  _ “I know. Shit, never had to do this before, everyone else assumes— I’m not **human** , Gary.” _

Blink. Blink again. Take a deep breath, pinch himself. Breathe out. “What?”

_ “I’m not human. I’m— shit, we never even figured out what I am, just that I— I am.” _ Another laugh, harsh and hurting.  _ “I’ve been here since— since forever, I suppose, I go around taking care of people’s unfinished business while they’re asleep. I don’t have a body or— or a life of my own, it already takes a lot of energy just to hijack your ear-thing like this—” _

“You don’t _—_ what?!”

The words continued spilling into Gary’s ear, rushed and tremulous.  _ “You call me Miah, but that’s not— it’s not really a real name, it’s just what Hannah gave me. M-I-A-H, short for Man In A Hurry, because they called me a Being Of Great Haste before that and it sounded like shit, and before that I was just Case Study 5-1-2 and I’m not any of them but what matters is that I’m not human but I am your friend, and I need to go find someone who’s asleep whose body I can borrow so I can go apologize to Hannah and Lex before—” _

Gary’s bluetooth crackled sharply, shocking his ear, and he wrenched it out without thinking. Half-panicked, he pushed it back into place with shaking hands. “Miah? Miah, are you there?”

Nothing but static.

“Miah, I’m not mad, I just _—_ I don’t understand, but I don’t _care!_ You’re still my friend, I’m still your _—_ _I—”_

Static, crackling and harsh against his ear.

“Please don’t _—_ ”

Fading to silence.

“ _—_ please don’t leave me too.”

Nothing. Just Gary, alone in the cold night, trembling fingers removing a dead bluetooth headset from his ear and staring blankly at his hands until the missiles came.

* * *

Once, many years in the past now, someone had summoned the Man In A Hurry for the first time. Back before he had a name to call his own, when he was just relieved to be more than a case number in a file.

He’d been drifting, not occupied with any current task and musing about a new baby that had been born earlier that week. A little girl, mother and sister living in a trailer near the edge of town, father disappeared before she even came into the world. The Man In A Hurry had been in the middle of wondering how much the family might Need his help when something tugged at his attention in an utterly alien way and, curious to a fault, he had allowed it.

Whatever he had expected, it hadn’t been to slide along the glass of a mirror and be greeted by a familiar face, red-eyed and stricken with grief. Or at least, what the Man In A Hurry assumed to be grief, being unfamiliar with the affliction himself.

Captain MacNamara looked up at him, and the Man In A Hurry wondered if he felt any surprise at seeing an imperfect copy of his own face looking back. After all, the Captain had aged in the years since they first met, while the Man In A Hurry continued to use a version of his appearance that had been frozen in time. Hair parted to the side and brushing over his shoulders, beard a clean inch in length and trimmed neatly, no wrinkles but the faintest of laugh lines. A man still young, somewhere in the later part of his twenties.

The Captain looking in the mirror was disheveled in a way he’d never been in their prior meetings, hair a mass of tangles trimmed an inch shorter than it had last been and eyes bloodshot. There was an almost sickly pallor to his skin, and the Man In A Hurry puzzled over the change in complexion.

_ “Captain?” _

MacNamara had blinked, slow in the manner of someone so exhausted as to have lost touch with their physical body, before deflating like a sad balloon. “It worked. And that’s _—_ ” His voice broke, which alarmed the Man In A Hurry greatly. “ _—_ that’s Colonel, now.”

The Man In A Hurry frowned, crossing his arms.  _ “You don’t seem happy.” _

“I’m not. I _—_ ” Barking a short, sharp laugh, MacNamara leaned back from what the Man In A Hurry assumed to be a sink (it was a bit outside of his field of vision, from within the mirror), running hands with bitten-down nails through his hair. “ _—_ it was not a regular service promotion. You _—_ you’re not human.”

_ “I thought we established this at our first acquaintance.” _

“Right. Yes, we did. I mean _—_ ” And there he paused, not with any of the careful thought that the Man In A Hurry had so associated with him, but rather in clear uncertainty. “ _—_ could you _—_ could you, speaking hypothetically, survive conditions that would be otherwise hostile to regular human life? Or _—_ or protect someone, protect a human host, if they were to _—_ ”

Well, that had certainly sounded rather suspect.  _ “You would need to define the conditions. Hostile weather environments, yes, to a degree. My ability to maintain a host body is limited, however, so it could not be a long-term exposure. Why are you—” _

“The Black and White.”

Freezing, the Man In A Hurry met MacNamara’s desperate gaze with narrowed eyes. The Captain _—_ no, Colonel now _—_ stared back, stubborn and something else the Man In A Hurry couldn’t name. He felt his frown pulling deeper, mind flickering back to _darkcolddarkcoldbig_ and the threatening, foreboding presences so much larger than he, than anything he’d ever known. He may not have understood the human world, but he certainly had never feared it like he feared the land of which the Colonel spoke.

_ “You should not know of that— that place.” _

To further surprise, MacNamara just laughed again, dropping his head into his hands and drawing a shaky breath. “No. No, we shouldn’t, but _—_ we do, and you do too, and _—_ can you?” The Man In A Hurry cocked his head, silently requesting further elaboration. “Can you go into it safely, and bring someone with _—_ bring someone with you? Or _—_ or bring someone out?”

Bring someone o _—_ _ “Colonel, what happened?” _

“We built a portal.” MacNamara’s voice was ragged, torn and tattered at the edges, so many Needs whirling around his form as to be nearly dizzying. “Connecting our world to _—_ to the Black and White. The fruits of so many years, so much research and technology and sweat and time. And we _—_ in an effort to establish contact with the forces within, we _—_ ”

Shock could not even describe what the Man In A Hurry had felt at that revelation.  _ “Are you fools, are you all fucking stupid? Humans like— nothing should ever try to reach those entities, that’s fucking suicidal!” _

“We’re aware!” MacNamara snapped, head swinging up with a glare, “We’re  _ well aware _ of that now! But since no other entities existing in this world deigned to  _ warn  _ us of that particular fact, we had to learn the hard way.” His shoulders sagged, drooping back down in defeat. He hadn’t been wearing his full uniform that day _—_ just a plain black shirt, long sleeves rolled up above his elbows and neckline twisted askew. It made him look younger, despite being the oldest the Man In A Hurry had ever seen him. Lost, in a way that seemed so antithetical to his very being _—_ ‘lost’ to MacNamara would be like ‘lazy’ or ‘slow’ to the Man In A Hurry.

Simply wrong.

He sighed, continuing in a quieter voice. “Colonel Cross _—_ my mentor, the head of _—_ _previous_ head of P.E.I.P., now _—_ went through the portal himself. He didn’t _—_ he said since we didn’t know the risks, yet, he couldn’t in good conscience send anyone but himself. He _—_ ” Once again, his voice broke, this time with a wavery sound that in other humans typically denoted the imminent presence of tears. The Man In A Hurry didn’t want to see this particular human cry.

In the hopes of staving off such an outcome, he forced his own voice into something softer. (Hah, him, _soft_ _—_ what a strange concept). _ “He never returned, did he?” _

“No.” Shaking his head, MacNamara leaned back and pressed fingers against his eyes, breathing carefully. “No, he returned, but he wasn’t _—_ he wasn’t himself, anymore. Something in there _—_ it, it _changed_ him. We tried to _—_ to help, to find what had been done and fix it, bring my _—_ bring him back, but _—_ ” 

That time, the tears had come, hot and silent save a tremor in MacNamara’s voice. “ _—_ he injured three soldiers breaking out of the medical ward, three good men and women that all looked up to him. And he went _—_ he just _went back_. He _—_ ” The tremor swells into a hiccup, and then a sob, “ _—_ he left us, he left me, I can’t _—_ please, tell me you can get him  _ back _ , I’m begging you. Tell me there’s something you can do.”

For the first time in the ephemeral existence that had been his life, the Man In A Hurry felt some part of his heart crack.  _ “I—” _

“ _ Please _ .”

_ “I’m sorry, I  _ **_can’t_ ** _.” _

MacNamara’s eyes had glinted, something so sharp and bright that for a moment the Man In A Hurry almost wondered if he was as human as he appeared. “You have to! You have to know something, there has to be something you can _—_ we can _—_ ”

_ “What could I possibly do?” _ The Man In A Hurry snapped back, feeling himself bristle at the demand (no matter how desperate it was).  _ “I have no power outside of sensing Needs and What Must Be Done, I have no thrall over others or strength with which to fight. If I set foot in the Black and White in your body, I would be torn to pieces by the Lords’ minions within minutes, and then you would be dead too. Worse, both of us would be absorbed into the fabric of the Black and White, with no hope of rescue or reincarnation whatsoever.” _

Traitorously, horribly, he had felt his own voice beginning to shake, something in the area of his chest seizing as MacNamara fully crumbled into sobs. Never had the Man In A Hurry felt quite so powerless.

_ “I can’t help you, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I wish I could.” _

And the painful thing had been that he really, truly meant it.

* * *

Finding any sort of way to create a pentagram on Air Force One was frankly a bit of a nightmare, but to Xander it barely even registered against the backdrop of the nightmarishness of the entire day and, quite horrifyingly, the immediate future of the country. Quite possibly the world, even, because with Russia hit and a retaliatory strike surely heading for the United States, there was every chance that the entire globe would devolve into nuclear war.

World war three, indeed.

So the moment he found anything remotely resembling a spare minute and a mirror, half-remembered stories echoing in the back of his mind in John’s voice ( _god, John, he’s— he can’t be—_ ), Xander shut himself in a quiet room and half-knelt, half-fell to his knees to trace the shaky shape on the floor.

“In a hurry, in a hurry, in a hurry god please _—_ ”

The door rattled and he jolted, prepared for a voice needing him once again, but none came. Instead, the temperature of the room seemed to drop sharply, as though someone had turned the air conditioning on. Xander shivered, pulling his jacket closer around himself and glancing around before returning his attention to the mirror (borrowed from one of the bathrooms, he’d put it back as soon as he was done) and jolting in alarm.

Looking back at him from the mirror was _—_ was _John_.

But not John as Xander had seen him just hours before ( _the last he’d ever— no, no, it couldn’t be—_ ). The man in the mirror looked young, nearly as young as John had been when he and Xander first met, and desperately panicked in a way John would never quite allow himself to show. When he met Xander’s eyes, instead of any recognition, his expression twisted into abject fury.

_ “Let me go! Let me fucking go right now, or I swear to fuck I will— damn it, let me go!” _

It wasn’t John’s voice _—_ higher and reedier, with a snapping edge that couldn’t quite be put down to its owner’s rage _—_ and Xander relaxed. “You’re the _—_ the Man In A Hurry, right?”

_ “Yeah, and I’m in a fucking hurry right now, so for the love of whatever fucking god you pray to let me go! Damn it, I need to—” _

The Man In A Hurry’s voice cracked alarmingly, eyes wild and desperate, and Xander felt a tug in his chest at the signs of such visible distress. “I’m sorry, I just _—_ I didn’t know who else to call, and I need _—_ ”

_ “What the fuck do you need that’s so damned—” _

“It’s John!” 

In the mirror, John’s half-ghost stilled, expression freezing into a mask of horror.  _ “John— General MacNamara? What— what happened to him, where is he, did that fucking monster of a doll get to him too, is he—” _

“He went _—_ ” Xander shuddered, hugging his arms around himself. Trying to keep all of the breaking parts of himself together, tucked into his body where they belonged. “He went into the Black and White after President Goodman, to rescue him, and he didn’t _—_ Howie said he was gone, but he can’t be, he can’t _—_ ”

The man in the mirror’s eyes widened.  _ “No— no, he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t have—” _

“He did, he _—_ there was no choice.”

_ “Damn it!”  _ The Man In A Hurry’s curse broke into something akin to a sob, shoulders hunching up beneath a too-familiar tumble of honey-golden curls.  _ “Damn it, he— that fucking idiot, he knew what would happen! And I couldn’t even— Damn it, why did you summon me? If you know him, you should know I can’t do anything! Can’t protect any bodies in that place, can’t fight any of the monsters living there, I can’t— I can’t **help** you, I can’t save him, why did you summon me? Damn it, I can’t— I can’t lose them too, send me back—” _

Xander’s heart wrenched at the panicked words spilling from the entity before him, and he gripped at his arms with clawed hands to stop himself from trying to do something ridiculous like reaching out to comfort the man. “I _—_ _please_ , are you sure there’s nothing you can do? I can’t _—_ please, I can’t lose him, not now.”

_ “And I can’t lose anyone else today!” _ The Man In A Hurry spat, glancing from side to side as though searching for an escape.  _ “I told him, I told him what would happen if he went in there! I can’t save him, but if I can just get back to them and—” _

“You told him?”

_ “Thirteen fucking years ago, when that Colonel Cross disappeared — **yes** , I fucking told him!” _ Was it just Xander’s imagination, or was the Man In A Hurry’s hair beginning to puff outwards? Lifting as though caught in water, or a wind?  _ “He summoned me just like you to ask the same damn question, and I can’t help any more now than I could on that day! Please, just let me go back, I need to—” _

A knot formed in Xander’s throat, and he swallowed it back down. “It’s not just John. This _—_ the entire world is in danger. Any help we can get, we need.”

Finally, the Man In A Hurry paused.  _ “Need?” _

“Need.” Xander affirmed, leaning forward and bracing himself against the floor. The impending destruction felt like a weight pressing down on his shoulders, like Atlas of old beneath the sky. “Wiggly manipulated our efforts against him and may have just thrown us into nuclear war. The world as we know it could be facing cataclysmic destruction if retaliation breaks out. I don’t _—_ ”

_ “And what do you think I could **possibly** do about that?” _

“I don’t know!” It was a frightening admission. “I don’t _know_ , I wasn’t ever supposed to be the one leading any of this. I don’t know what the next step will be. John _—_ John always had a next step, he always had a plan and a strategy, I’m not a strategy man.” His eyes stung, heat prickling at the corners no matter how he tried to blink it away. “We _—_ he and I always worked best as a unit. I’ve never been a leader the way he was, science doesn’t take leadership the way this _—_ the way all of this does. I don’t know what he would do next, and I can’t ask him because he’s _gone_.”

For a moment, the Man In A Hurry fell silent. His eyes, piercing just like John’s had always been, but sharp with pain where John’s had always held warmth, watched Xander without blinking. Xander wondered what it was that he saw.

_ “... I don’t know either.” _

It was a quiet admission, with a scraped-raw sound that hurt to hear. Xander swallowed back a broken feeling that might have come out a sob.

The Man In A Hurry continued, head bowed.  _ “I knew General MacNamara. He— he gave me my first name, the first time I was ever something more than a phenomenon, or a number. Acknowledged my second, celebrated my third. He gave me freedom to make a life for myself. He— fuck.” _ He laughed, weak and watery.  _ “He was a good man. But I don’t— I don’t know what he would have done either. All I have is his old face, I’m not him.” _

And neither was Xander, and wasn’t that just the worst of it all. Xander wouldn’t ever deny his own prowess _—_ he was nearly the most intelligent person in P.E.I.P., the head of nearly a decade of scientific and technological research, developments, and inventions. He could carry out fieldwork to textbook perfection, could teach new recruits how to follow in his footsteps with one of the highest success rates in P.E.I.P.’s academic history. He had always been fucking exceptional at what he did _—_ but what he did had never been what John did, and that had been alright because they were there to work _together_ and cover each other’s weaknesses.

For all that John had been the agency’s head, he had been Xander’s partner first. In all ways that mattered, they were a team, the best P.E.I.P. had ever seen. Now, with John gone, Xander found himself lost in a way he hadn’t felt since he was barely twenty and hanging onto every one of Colonel Cross’s stories with furious theories circling through his mind.

His radio beeped, incoming messages and alerts dragging his attention away, and he hitched it up to his ear before it could fall from his hand. “Speak, Private.”

_ “Sir, we’ve just received word—” _

Ah.

So this was the way the world ended. With both a bang, and a whimper. A bit hysterically, Xander wondered if T. S. Eliot had ever seen something quite like this coming.

When he set the radio down, the Man In A Hurry spoke up, eyes darting between it and Xander with renewed wariness.  _ “What was that? What’s going on?” _

“We _—_ ” Oh, Xander felt aged by years, as though if he allowed himself he might just begin crumbling. “Word just came through. The first of multiple Russian retaliatory strikes has just hit the United States. I don’t know why but _—_ the target seems to have been a town in the state of Michigan. We’re expecting more to _—_ ”

A startling, desperate cry cut him off as the Man In A Hurry fell back from the front of the mirror, a shaking hand rising to cover his mouth.  _ “In— no, no, they can’t be— **please** , let me go back, I have to do something, they’re—” _

“You’re _—_ ” Horror clawed at Xander’s heart. “ _—_ that place?”

_ “They must have targeted the place Wiggly planned to emerge, they— no, **no** , please tell me something survived, anything, my— I can’t—”  _

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

_ “Please, whatever you Need, I’ll do it, I’ll do it all, just let them be safe, please—” _

“We can’t _—_ there’s nothing we can do _—_ ”

_ “No, no, they can’t be, they can’t— my—” _ The Man In A Hurry’s expression all but shattered, shoulders heaving in heart-wrenchingly human sobs within the bordered confines of the mirror. Xander reached towards the surface on instinct, trying to think of what he could possibly offer as comfort, before halting himself when the image on the glass shied away.

With no other option, he simply sat there on the closet floor, listening to an ageless entity sob and gasp out jumbled names and wondering where they all went so wrong.

Wondering what could possibly come next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! I added a part 2!
> 
> Surprise 2! This was supposed to be a one-shot, but now I have (very vague) plans for it to turn into a whole post-canon fix it AU! Not sure yet, but y'know what? We're gonna make it work eventually. 
> 
> For now, uh... enjoy the pain?

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first thing I've written (well, posted) for Hatchetfield, so please don't go looking for any more by me! Though I have another longer fic in the works that I'd love to post when... ugh... when I have more chapters written.
> 
> MIAH is probably wildly out of character here and I don't care because I had fun writing it!
> 
> I'm kind of tempted to add a second chapter for some proper Relationship Happening, but... hm, let's wait to see what folks think and/or where my inspiration goes.
> 
> **Minor update 2/16** : Updated MacNamara's military ranks to line up better with the headcanon I've put together for his promotional timeline. (IE: promoted to Colonel after Cross's disappearance, since Colonel was the rank Cross held, and then rose from that to General in the thirteen years following).


End file.
